Hilltop Howlers

Members

Totem

Panther-Devours-the-Past is a panther spirit that survived the extinction of panthers in Pennsylvania by learning to move in and out of time, and to devour other spirits whose physical counterparts have disappeared. There is an open question as to whether or not this makes Panther-Devours-the-Past a magath. If she is, what effect will that have on her pack?

Panther-Devours-the-Past honors the wolves’ tradition of hunting as a pack by joining them on their hunts, but in return, she asks that they honor her tradition of hunting alone, by hunting a gaffling, alone, once each cycle of the moon.

Territory

The Hilltop Howlers claim territory including parts of Carrick and Hays, including Hays Woods, and the former territory of the Hunting Shadows.

Claimed Loci

Abandoned Barge ●●

A barge abandoned on the shores of the Monongahela River has become overgrown with trees and other vegetation. A Uratha can step sideways here by moving through the dense growth. The locus itself is a tree growing through the barge. The locus produces plant and decay essence.

Page Dairy Mart ●●

A post behind Page Dairy Mart has become a locus of joy and gluttony. It produces a lot of essence, but the spirits know that and consume it quickly, leaving it as a fairly low-power locus. Joy spirits circulate as faceless, giggling children, while gluttony spirits have fed voraciously enough to become greater gafflings, taking the appearance of huge, slug-like beasts. One of them spent some time in the physical world as a duguthim named “Sarah.”

The Fold ●●

This copse of trees seems much larger from inside than it could possibly be when you look at it from outside. This effect is even more pronounced in the Hisil. It is a locus of quiet and stillness, guarded by a Voiceless called Quiet-in-the-Trees.

The Wigman House ●●●

The stained glass window in the old Wigman House is a locus of death, guarded by the ancestral spirit of the Wigman family, Mr. Wigman. With a funeral home to one side and a graveyard across the street, this old house, a lingering reminder of a by-gone age, has become home to spirits of death.

L’Enfant ●●●

L’Enfant is a touching, melancholy bronze statue sculpted by Paul Roger-Bloche in 1899, but much of its history has been lost, or forgotten. The name of the artist and the year it was sculpted are known only because they are stamped into the statue. There is no record of the city’s acquisition of it, only when it was moved out of storage and installed at the entrance of Phillips Park by the Mothers’ Club of Carrick. When the club relocated its headquarters to Overbrook Boulevard in 1963, they moved the statue to its current location. There, it became lost behind thick weeds and vegetation, completely forgotten, until a boy scout rediscovered it in 2001. The oft-forgotten monument has become a powerful locus of grief and longing, attracting wailing spirits of mourning and grief.

Carrick Community Boxing Academy ●●

A boxing gym at the corner of Brownsville and Maytide founded by 1958 Golden Gloves winner “Shorty” Gruber has drawn kids from Brookline, Brentwood, Baldwin, and Mt. Washington. Gruber was able to pull the gym together with help from his friends, from state representatives to old friends in the Steamfitters Local. The focus of so much community feeling makes it a powerful source of essence, much of it collecting in Gruber’s own locker. A Uratha can fit through the locker and tumble out into the Hisil, where the gym looks like a Greco-Roman arena, overseen by a jackal-headed Ralunim called Fury-that-Binds. The locus generates essence of competition and domination.

Local Spirits

Glory-of-Sky-Reaper is a bald eagle spirit, and a newcomer to the area. He is sharp-eyed and careful with details, a consumate hunter who strikes from unexpected places when he can. He has learned the territory quickly and is canny and tactically sound.

Mr. Brown is a road spirit, of the long-used road to Brownsville. He is wise of the area around him and his tributaries, as he thinks of lesser roads. He appears as a man of varying ages, from a young fur trapper to an old and faded businessman. A logger, a hauler, a worker.

North-Wind-Heralds-the-Frost often visits this area, particularly in the autumn. Though still appearing like a frail figure, it has become more powerful than most breeze spirits, but no less fickle. Its actions have led some local Ithaeur to guess that it has a ban requiring it to announce the onset of cold — including not just the onset of cold weather, but emotional coldness and even the coldness of the grave.

Shadow-in-Sunlight is a crow spirit. He arrives and departs like a murder of crows, which huddle together. You don’t so much see them meld as realize you perceive him as a single large crow with deep, true black feathers who speaks in a whispered tone no matter his volume. He is a secret hoarder, and a glutton able to devour all kinds of essence. He is patient and smart.

Slinks-in-Shadows was a beating human heart in the den of a ferocious bear spirit that David Smith recovered and restored with gifts of essence. It now helps David and his pack as an informer.

White Fire Oak stands in the middle of the Shadow of Hays Woods. It claimed to be a friend of the Hunting Shadows, and related their names and their fate to Phoenix Adamski only after he swore to become a Hunter in Darkness and dedicate his life to preserving its forest.

Mother Night, the former totem of the Hunting Shadows, may still be in the area. According to local Hunters in Darkness lore, the Shadows’ totem is the daughter of Black Wolf, Hikaon-Ur, the totem of the entire tribe.

Sparrow the Archangel is a powerful songbird spirit who effectively rules the air above the pack’s territory in the Hisil.

Corn Maiden was part of a relatively benign triune goddess called the Three Sisters in ages past; now, feeding off a homogenous human diet of high fructose corn syrup, she has become a bloated spirit tyrant attended by spirits of gluttony as well as spirits of plants.

Black-Bones-in-the-Deep is an ancient earth elemental from the Coal Descant who rules the deep, forgotten mining shafts and tunnels that lie beneath the neighborhood.

Sol Invictus is a powerful Searing, a merciless Helion, who has come to hunt down the Asah Gadar — Bale Hounds — that he says have infested the region.

Tireclaw is a powerful magath (bear/SUV) that the Howlers hunted down alongside the Woodward. They are now working to use its recent discorporation as an opportunity to rehabilitate him, and perhaps make him a bear spirit once more.

Current Affairs

The destruction of the Hilltop Howlers’ predecessors, the Hunting Shadows, seems like a cause for concern. Ian’s uncle, Sean McGrath, was identified by White Fire Oak as the hunter who killed at least one of them with silver arrows. How did he defeat the entire pack? Will he come after them next? And what of the legendary locus the Hunting Shadows guarded in Hays Woods?

The Hilltop Howlers pledged to Web Mother Depriver-of-Liberty to wage war on the Beshilu, the Rat Hosts, for a year and a day, once they established their pack and claimed their territory. Now that they have, the pressure will be on to begin fighting that war.

During the hunt for Panther-Devours-the-Past, the Howlers ran into a predator spirit called the Woodwose, who allowed them to pass only on the condition that they swear to join him on a hunt for a greater jaggling on midsummer’s eve. That day is fast approaching.

The Howlers struck a deal with Mr. Brown, asking for intelligence if they started clearing the blight spirits that have infested the stretch of his road through their territory.